Opinion: No one does pomp and circumstance like the British

Nobody does pomp and circumstance like the British – that was the view of one American journalist I saw interviewed over the weekend about the King’s Coronation.

Villages, towns, streets and communities of all kinds came together to celebrate King Charles III finally getting his crown – and that’s wonderful.

But here’s the rub, in my opinion, we were given an extra bank holiday to mark the occasion – Monday May 8 – fabulous, noone is going to argue about that – any time off work has to be welcome.

However, the coronation was on Saturday May 6 – not a bank holiday – and for a huge many people a normal working day. So if those people were wanting to watch the pageantry then I can only suppose they would have had to take a day’s annual leave.

Not everyone gets bank holidays off automatically either, and it’s likely the people who work Saturdays are also those most likely to miss out on those welcome extra days.

I understand why a weekend was chosen for the event, but surely it would have been better to have the coronation on the Friday – make that the bank holiday, and still give people who are lucky enough to get weekends off, a three-day weekend.

Not sure of the logic behind choosing a Saturday, I just hope that it wasn’t done in the mistaken idea that most people don’t work Saturdays – because that would mean the powers that be are a bit out of touch with the real world of work and surely that can’t be true…

There are a few stories that bring a smile to my face when writing them and one of those this week was the one about Maureen Loring, a 90-year-old resident of Lyncroft Care Home in Wisbech, having the chance to meet her Strictly Come Dancing hero Giovanni Pernice – well who wouldn’t want to get up close with Gio?

Not only did she get to see the Italian heart throb sing and dance, she actually got to chat with him, and according to reports Giovanni was as gallant as you would hope, giving Maureen a hug and asking her lots of questions about her life.

How lovely for Maureen who was gifted the treat by the care home’s activities co-ordinator, who was given tickets to Gio’s show in Peterborough as a thank-you for her work. So how thoughtful to think of Maureen and her Giovanni ‘crush’ and share her reward – a truly lovely gesture, well done Sarah Perkins for making Maureen’s dream come true…

Thursday we went to the polls to choose our local representatives for the next four years.

I use the term ‘we’ quite loosely, because when it comes down to it, just a quarter of us took the time and effort to either use a postal vote or put a cross in the box for our chosen candidates.

With a district wide turn out of 26.24% that means slightly over one in four of the 76,457 people eligible to vote, did.

How disappointing. In one Wisbech ward only 17% people bothered to put a cross in the box.

Turn out in local elections is always lower than when it comes to the general election, but as one candidate said after the results were declared, something needs to be done to address voter apathy.

Quite why people don’t bother to vote is open to debate – is it because they forget or don’t have time? Or is it because they are simply so disillusioned with politics and politicians in general they don’t see the point.

I fear it is quite likely the latter, they are fed up with politicians of all political persuasions and feel their voice doesn’t count.

But it actually does count, as proved in March North Ward where one person’s vote was all that separated two candidates – that one vote made a difference to the result and how the town as a whole will be represented for the next four years.

That is important. As I said before I really don’t care what a person’s political opinion is – whether it aligns with mine or not is irrelevant – but voting is such a privilege. There are people all over the world who are denied the democracy we enjoy in this country and would give their right arm to be able to have their say.

In the past ordinary British working men and women as a whole were denied the right to vote – it took a lot of campaigning and in the case of women it also cost lives – for elections to be open to all and that is why it should be something we all do.

I just hope come the general election, whenever Rishi decides to call it – sees more people exercising their democratic right, but I fear that the apathy will continue is something is not done to spark people’s interest once more – and that’s on all political sides not one in particular so come on